Superintendent acknowledges 'system failed'

JANE LOPES

Thursday

Mar 27, 2008 at 12:01 AM

MIDDLEBORO — Appearing before the selectmen Monday night, Supt. of Schools Robert Sullivan said "the system failed" a seven-year-old boy who was allegedly beaten and burned with cigarettes by his mother's boyfriend. The superintendent apologized to the child and pledged a full investigation of the School Department's role and said he would take steps to ensure that he would never have to make such a statement again.

MIDDLEBORO — Appearing before the selectmen Monday night, Supt. of Schools Robert Sullivan said "the system failed" a seven-year-old boy who was allegedly beaten and burned with cigarettes by his mother's boyfriend. The superintendent apologized to the child and pledged a full investigation of the School Department's role and said he would take steps to ensure that he would never have to make such a statement again.

Supt. Sullivan said no one requested that he appear Monday night but that he felt it was his responsibility to respond to concerns that have been expressed by town officials and residents since David Privette, 22, of Boston and the child's mother, Michelle Henry, 32, of Middleboro were arrested last week. The child and his 3-year-old sister are in the custody of the state.

Police Chief Gary Russell, who has been critical of the School Department's role in the case, also appeared before the selectmen and said he will work with the superintendent to amend an existing memorandum of understanding between the police and school departments if necessary. He said the two departments have had excellent communications and the recent child abuse case, which has been described as the worst any local official has dealt with in recent years, "is an isolated incident whose perpetrators are being dealt with in the court system."

Supt. Sullivan said he plans to meet with the district attorney and "other appropriate law enforcement and legal personnel" to review the department's procedures for dealing with suspected child abuse, which were recommended by the state Department of Social Services (DSS). He said school personnel "met all legal requirements as a mandated reporter of child abuse" under state law, but "with the benefit of hindsight and with my present knowledge that DSS failed to report this case to the district attorney's office and the Middleboro Police Department on a timely basis, it is clear that compliance with our legal requirements as a mandated reporter was not enough in this case," the superintendent said. "The system failed our young student.

"To the young victim, I am sorry that it took so long for you to be delivered from what must have been hell," he said. "I am sorry that we as a community are suffering through this ordeal. However, assessing blame and apologizing is not enough.

"I will meet with staff...both to reinforce the practices and policies currently in place to protect our children and to re-examine all of our procedures so that no instance of child abuse that comes to our attention anywhere in the Middleboro public schools can continue without the immediate intervention of the proper authorities," the superintendent said.

The staff at the Memorial Early Childhood Center, where the 7-year-old was a student, reported suspected abuse to DSS three times, beginning on Dec. 19 when the child first told the school nurse that his mother's boyfriend beat him with a belt. When the nurse told the child she needed to call his mother, she said he cried and said, "No, I don't want no more whippings."

The nurse filed a second report with DSS on March 4 after the child told a special needs teacher that "he didn't want to go home because David puts a cigarette on his private parts," according to Middleboro Det. Timothy Needham's report.

The third and final report by the school was made on March 17 after the school nurse, having been told the child refused to come out of a bathroom stall, examined him and saw burns in his pelvic area and buttocks. DSS reported the incident to the Plymouth County district attorney's office, the DA's office called Middleboro police, and Mr. Privette was subsequently arrested.

Following a dangerousness hearing last Thursday, Mr. Privette is being held without bail on three charges of assault and battery on a child under 14 and a charge of mayhem, the latter indicating injuries that could be permanent and disfiguring or disabling.

The boy's mother has been charged with assault and battery on a child and reckless endangerment. A dangerousness hearing was to be held this week.

In an interview with the Boston Globe last week, the DSS commissioner admitted the system failed the Middleboro child in a number of ways and that the agency should have acted sooner to remove the child from his home. DSS involvement with the family dates back to 2002, according to news reports.

An angry Chief Russell was quoted last week as saying that the child was "sent home to be tortured," and that school officials should have called his department when DSS failed to respond.

Monday night, the chief suggested that a new policy state that "where a child reports that he or she is being abused or has been abused, the Police Department is immediately notified so that we may assist school officials in their investigation as well as conduct our own."

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